The First Cut Read online

  Nicky couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice, but she dismissed it quickly. Of course he could stay. ‘I really need to go.’

  ‘And leave all this?’ He threw his long arm out lazily to take in the wide sweep of the estate. ‘You simply can’t go.’

  She smiled at his insistence. ‘How long are you going to be here?’

  He leaned up on his elbows and looked at her, shrugging. ‘As long as you are.’

  His T-shirt had ridden up and she could see the flat hard planes of his stomach. She forced herself to look away as a bolt of desire shot through her.

  ‘Stay another hour. Then you can go.’

  ‘I suppose the traffic will be better if I leave later.’ She paused, feeling the sexual tension.

  As the dusk began to creep around them they retreated indoors to the drawing room. Adam found a box of matches and lit a variety of stubby candles. The smoke drifted towards the ceiling as shadows danced across the walls and over the unsmiling faces of the ancestors.

  ‘Have you had a good time?’

  ‘It’s been amazing.’

  ‘I take it Greg doesn’t know you’re here.’

  Nicky shifted, embarrassed. ‘No, he doesn’t.’

  ‘I guess we all have secrets from those we love.’

  His mocking tone seemed to slap her to her senses. She stood up. She was much older than him, a married woman. It was time to take control. Whatever problems Greg and she were having, this wasn’t the way to deal with them. She needed to banish the grey, the unspoken . . .

  ‘Adam—’

  ‘Don’t. I don’t need or want your pity.’

  ‘It’s hardly pity.’

  ‘I fancy you rotten, is that such a sin?’

  ‘No. But it’s why I need to go. I’m married. I’m not in a position to get embroiled—’

  ‘Come on, admit it: you fancy me.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think it’s helpful if I answer. It really is for the best.’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘For us both.’ Adam said nothing. ‘I really need to go.’ She stared at him lying on the sofa, those dark eyes boring into her. He’d be good in the sack, that much was obvious. She forced herself back to the issue in question. ‘If I misled you, I’m sorry.’ He was silent, staring at her with something that for a flash of a moment looked like hate. For the first time Nicky felt a flicker of alarm. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have come.’

  That roused him. ‘No, no, not at all. I’m delighted you came. It’s just I . . . there’s so much more I want to know about you.’ He looked at her again. ‘Of course you need to go. It’s what you said you’d do.’ He flung his feet to the floor and stood. ‘I’ll make you a coffee. We can’t have you falling asleep at the wheel.’

  She didn’t answer; she was too busy trying to interpret that last comment. Odd, and aggressive. She dragged her hand across her face. She’d had too much to drink, or too much sun. She watched him stride out to the kitchen. No, he was a gent, a special person. She luxuriated in the what ifs of having lived a different life, of being a decade younger, of being unfettered by marriage, Greg, her career, of having the ability to throw it all up in the air and watch where it fell. She had been that person once; it was a privilege to glimpse her again, hazy with wine and heat, but deep down she had no desire to be that woman again. The flirtation was over. It was time to go home.

  Adam came in with a delicate coffee mug, stirring in sugar. ‘Sorry, there’s no milk, but this’ll make it taste better.’ She wrapped her hand around the mug. He sat down on the floor opposite her, his legs crossed. They chinked drinks, his with wine, hers with coffee.

  ‘I think this should be the last time we see each other, Adam. And I say that with a lot of regret.’

  His expression was impossible to read. ‘Have you done many things in life you regret?’

  She paused. ‘Oh loads, probably. But they pale next to not saving Grace. That’s the thing I most regret.’

  ‘The person who killed Grace, how do you know they’re not coming for you?’

  She was so shocked she couldn’t reply for a moment. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly that – her death had no motive and no reason, so how do you know you’re not next?’

  Nicky jumped to her feet. ‘Adam! That’s a disgusting thing to say!’

  ‘I thought it was a logical question . . .’ He tailed off when he saw the look on her face. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it . . .’

  Nicky slammed the mug down but was overcome by a wave of dizziness. She half fell backwards onto a chair.

  ‘Are you all right?’ His voice came from far away but she could see him bending over her, close. The image of him swam in her blurred vision, blending with the shadows and the candlelight. ‘Nicky?’

  16

  Troy was getting angry. He could feel the heat begin in his belly and expand outwards. RJ was looking scared, turning almost green as he huddled on the rank armchair in the small room that stank of enclosed spaces and cigarette butts. The rumble of a skateboard’s wheels bled through the window, followed by swearing and a clatter as someone young took a tumble on the walkway.

  It had been harder than he imagined trying to track RJ down on the estate. No one knew who he was and Troy understood why: he was too poor for anyone to notice him. Eventually he’d ended up at this hovel. With the first slap he’d confessed readily enough to hiring a hit man to kill his business partner. He talked openly about his past life as if it belonged to an entirely different person. His eyes had turned almost dreamy as he recalled it.

  ‘I got divorced, had a breakdown . . .’ He tailed off, having trouble forming his thoughts. ‘Been here for three years now.’ It was as if he wanted the company. ‘Never see the kids, the taxis are long gone.’

  The anger spread hard and fast across Troy’s chest as he punched RJ in the jaw. He heard the bone snap. His plan was being derailed by the man’s weakness, by his inability to keep going in a crisis. People paid if they had something to lose, but this bastard was just waiting to be put out of his misery. There was obviously no money here. Not a sou.

  Darek had kept records of his work as an insurance policy, he told Troy proudly that night they were downing vodka at his flat. Names, dates and numbers, as much information as he could, sealed up in the box at the bank. Some of the jobs Troy had done himself; RJ’s he had not. Darek had also kept records of the amounts that were paid, so Troy knew exactly what was due – and exactly what he’d been denied by Darek. It made him even angrier. Troy never met the client; he never knew their names, faces or what they did. All part of the know nothing, tell nothing mantra. But he had been the one taking the risk and getting a fraction of the reward. That had all been going to change . . . But the idea that RJ still had anything like the twenty grand he’d paid was laughable.

  He thought about killing RJ, but what was the point? He gave him a punch in his left eye which knocked him clean out. RJ never heard his cry of anguish from the bathroom when Troy discovered that there was no soap in the flat.

  Troy reeled along a south London arterial road searching for a pub or café. He couldn’t get back in his car and touch his steering wheel with his dirty hands. About a quarter of a mile further on he found a parade of beaten-up shops and a greasy spoon and hurried to the bathroom past a series of plastic tables stuck to the wall and chairs bolted to the floor. He washed his hands four times with the liquid soap, scrubbed his nails on one hand with the backs of his nails on the other. He calmed right down instantly and came back out into the café. A square lady with large sweat circles under her armpits was manning a boiling urn. He slid into a plastic seat.

  The square woman came over. ‘What can I get you, handsome?’ she asked, licking her finger and flicking the pages on a dog-eared pad.

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘Right you are.’ She shuffled off.

  Troy knew it wouldn’t all go to plan. He knew that not every contact on Darek’s list wou
ld be lucrative, or found. He thought of Lyndon, probably being massaged by a Moroccan juvenile under an orange tree. Well, he wanted his own tropical verandah and personal services. And by God, these conniving, lying, greedy, murdering motherfuckers were going to give them to him.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ The square woman slid the cup over towards him. He smiled thinly.

  Troy had only one: Greg Peterson.

  17

  Nicky struggled to keep her eyelids open. The room had turned ninety degrees. She sat up, disoriented, and a pain in her head exploded. She was on the floor of the drawing room, still in her clothes, an animal fur draped over her. The rough hairs of a big cat whose descendants were nearly extinct poked her palm. Her neck was stiff and her hip numb. The candles had burned down to black stains on the plates and the grey dawn was breathing a new day into the room. A plane rumbled overhead, drilling into her headache. Adam was not here. Had she spent the whole night on the floor? She had no idea. She stood in a hurry, annoyed and alarmed that she was still here. She saw a glass of water and drank it greedily, then tried to stagger to the door, but the sofa appeared before her and she sank down into pleasing softness. Better than the floor, was the last thought she could process.

  It was Adam rubbing her arm that woke her fully in the end. The day was acid bright, the dawn long gone. ‘You need to wake up. You’ve been out for hours and hours.’ He pulled her upright. ‘I made you a black tea.’ She took the cup without answering and drank it down. ‘Do you feel all right? You suddenly fell asleep last night and I couldn’t wake you. But it’s nine now. You’ve been asleep for more than twelve hours. Do you need to see a doctor?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She ran her hands distractedly through her hair, embarrassed. Sitting side by side like this on a sofa had all the awkwardness of the first moments of the morning after the night before, without any of the pleasure to look back on. She desperately tried to remember what on earth had gone on, but it was all a blank. ‘What happened last night? Why did I suddenly fall asleep?’

  Adam shrugged, but he didn’t meet her eye. ‘I think you had too much to drink.’

  The silence was heavy between them with things unspoken.

  ‘Remember that when you nodded off I spent the night by myself.’ He was defiant now. ‘Not so much fun in that.’

  Nicky said nothing. She was still trying to compose herself and banish the cotton-wool feeling from her head.

  ‘Do you want a bath?’ He was smiling now as he changed the subject.

  ‘I thought there was no electricity.’

  ‘There are no lights. There’s a gas boiler that heats the water.’

  She felt grubby and stiff and a soak would wake her up. He led her to an upstairs bathroom where there was an old roll-top bath. It had fat taps with the metal flaking off and a precarious plastic bridge linking the sides, bending in the middle with the weight of old shampoo bottles and dried-up bits of soap. The water was boiling and as she made shampoo peaks in her hair she tried to make sense of how she could fall asleep so soundly for so long. She had a blank, funny feeling in her head. She felt aware of how fragile she was, how she needed to be handled carefully. Misgivings she couldn’t articulate swirled around. Had he drugged her? He was part of the Rohypnol generation, after all. She forced the thought sharply from her mind. ‘Get a grip, Nicky,’ she scolded. She rubbed herself dry with a towel so threadbare it made her skin turn pink.

  When she came to the kitchen he was carefully lining up slices of bread under the gas grill, humming a tune she didn’t recognize. She did the washing-up as he cooked. She picked up a cup and was about to tip the contents down the sink when she realized it still had the remains of her coffee from last night. Adam had his back to her, buttering toast. She sniffed the contents, and then sniffed again. An aroma of coffee hit her. She watched the black liquid swirl away down the plughole. After a moment she sat down.

  ‘Since you’re still here, I can show you the grounds. We can swim in the lake.’

  ‘I don’t swim in lakes.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of. The bottom is sandy—’

  ‘I don’t swim in lakes,’ she said, far too sharply.

  He didn’t reply. For the first time their conversation wasn’t flowing; she felt guarded and suspicious. He turned, opened a cupboard and pulled out a tin of treacle, then sat at the table. ‘There’s no jam; it goes mouldy when no one’s here. But this is just like honey.’ He opened the tin and plunged in a knife, drawing out an elongating strand of black treacle, runny in the heat. He scraped it across the toast. Nicky had to overcome an urge to gag. She shoved her chair back so violently it crashed to the floor, making Adam jump.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Nicky felt the sweat break out across her chest. An image of Grace, lying on the lawn in the moonlight, her blood as black as treacle as it ran over her lifeless chest, came to her with such force that she stumbled as she raced for the toilet and hurled violently. A moment later she heard Adam behind her.

  ‘Are you ill?’

  She was shaking all over, that horrific night coming back with brutal force. She sat on the toilet seat and tried to get a grip on her fraying imagination. She must be sick. How could she have fallen asleep for so long and now be a shuddering wreck, haunted by images she had spent years of her life trying to erase? She wanted to connect to the outside world, to hear familiar voices, to phone work and apologize for not being there.

  ‘Can I borrow your phone?’

  He paused. ‘Who are you calling?’

  His tone of enquiry was all wrong. ‘Does it matter?’ She was often quick to rise and couldn’t keep the irritation from her voice.

  ‘It’s just that there’s no way of charging the battery, so I try to keep calls to a minimum while I’m here, otherwise it’ll run out.’ He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his mobile. ‘But here, of course you can use it.’

  Nicky looked at the small black lifeline and felt ashamed. This was a man who had saved her life just over a week ago, who had jumped into a swirling river and risked his own neck for her, who had put her up in his house and spent an evening alone as she snored away, drunk on too much red wine. She made a quick call to Maria but she wasn’t there. She left a message explaining that she was ill but would be back tomorrow.

  ‘If you’re sick, I can look after you.’ She watched him blocking the doorway of the toilet. He was so large she couldn’t see the hallway beyond him.

  18

  ‘I really don’t want you to go.’ Adam was playfully trying to pull her handbag off her shoulder as she approached the car. The shadows were lengthening across the grass again as the hot day wore on.

  ‘But you know I have to.’ Her shoulders were warm where they’d caught the sun when she and Adam had lounged on his terrace. Her misgivings about her night asleep had faded, but sexual tension was building and Nicky knew she had to be going. She didn’t want an affair; she didn’t want to lie any more to Greg. It was time to go.

  She opened the car door and looked back at Adam. He wore a pale blue T-shirt that accentuated his deepening tan, the fabric taut across his chest. I’ll probably never kiss anyone as beautiful again, she realized. Suddenly, with a last burst of enthusiasm that a reluctant party guest discovers when they know they can finally leave, Nicky reached out and kissed him goodbye.

  It was a mistake. He was a much better kisser than she had been expecting. As he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him she thought she was being playful; she thought his youth and looks meant he didn’t feel and couldn’t be hurt. But he was giving his all, and she was acting like a child.

  She pulled away sharply and got in the car. She started the engine and the roof began to recline. She felt herself blush to the roots of her hair. She could feel Adam’s eyes boring into her. Nicky suddenly very desperately wanted to leave. She was playing with fire, and she would get burned.

  She put the car in reverse
, turned and started down the drive without looking back. In a few moments she would be away from the house, the shame of how she was manipulating Adam would start to lessen, her guilt at how she was testing her marriage would recede. She tried to accelerate but something was wrong; the car felt unbalanced, veering to the side. She stopped and got out and saw that the front tyre was completely flat.

  ‘Something wrong?’ She heard his feet crunching towards her.

  Nicky said nothing. She bent down and examined the tyre, tracing her fingers over the grooves in the rubber. ‘Is it flat?’ She heard his voice above her, his shadow falling in the afternoon sun across her shoulders. Her finger felt the long gash in the rubber without her having to see it. That was no nail or shard of glass. She stood up and opened the boot with cold efficiency. She was angry but thought it best not to show it; she felt it was important to pretend. Beneath her calm exterior something darker and more sinister was growing: alarm.

  Nicky yanked at the protective cover over the spare wheel. She knew about cars. She wasn’t some sap who needed to call the AA if she got a flat. Her dad had tinkered with a series of broken-down cars in their driveway all through her childhood. She’d hung out with him for hours, watching and helping him. Adam didn’t know that. She felt a sour thrill of petty victory. Adam came from a generation where cars were built by robots in Osaka and a rite of passage for a young man didn’t include getting greasy under a bonnet. She knew something he didn’t. She would get the spare on and get the hell out. She needed to be out of here – now. Tomorrow morning at the office was looming in her mind. Deadlines and office politics and news round-ups and washing and ironing were where her thoughts were turning now.

  She started yanking at the spare until Adam came to her rescue. ‘Let me help you. Don’t fight it.’

  He pulled it out and together they rolled it towards the front of the car. Nicky went for the jack. She opened the bag and pulled out the piece of heavy metal. Adam was crouched down looking at the front wheel.